STORY: Witness says he told truth at 1991 trial

Herman P. Elkins -- who testified 19 years ago that David Wayne Boyce confessed to him at the Newport News City Jail that he slashed his roommate to death --- stood by that testimony Wednesday.

"He said he cut (the victim) from the rear, or in the rear," Elkins said Wednesday.

Elkins added that Newport News police and prosecutors never forced him to testify or made any promises to him. "They did not threaten me in any way," he testified. "They didn't suggest anything."

Those statements stand in sharp contrast to what Elkins told Charles E. Haden, of Boyce's then-attorneys, in an unsolicited phone call to Haden's home in 2004 - a call that helped trigger a re-examination of Boyce's conviction.

During that call, Elkins said he lied at the urging of police in return for a gun possession charge being dropped. He said police asked him to "step up to the plate for them," giving him details on how Timothy Kurt Askew was killed. Askew was stabbed 27 times, including a slashed throat.

"I'm saying that what I was forced to do, forced to testify, was not true," Elkins told Haden at the time.

Elkins, a homeless man who now lives in San Diego, testified via teleconference Wednesday - with his words beamed into a Norfolk Circuit Court conference room.

A video monitor on one end of the small room showed Elkins in a ponytail and blue shirt. Sitting in Norfolk, facing Elkins, was one of Boyce's attorneys and an attorney for the state Attorney General's Office. Boyce, cuffed and in an orange prison jumpsuit, flanked his lawyer on one side of the long table. Norfolk Circuit Court Judge John R. Doyle III, in his black robe, was on the other side. Other attorneys were also on hand.

Boyce, now 39, was convicted of capital murder and robbery in the grisly 1990 slaying of Askew, 35, in an EconoLodge motel on Jefferson Avenue in Oyster Point. The killing took place not in the room that Boyce and Askew shared but in a second room Askew had rented that night. Boyce is now serving two life prison terms.

Represented by attorneys working with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, Boyce asserts that none of a large amount of forensics found at the bloody murder scene links him to the crime, that Elkins perjured himself and that evidence in Boyce's favor wasn't shared.

At the original trial, Elkins testified that Boyce confessed to him through the bars on his cell on his way back from taking a shower. He said Boyce told him he and Askew were gay lovers, and the slaying was linked to a dispute over that.

Asked why he recanted to Haden if that wasn't true, Elkins said only, "He wanted me to say I perjured myself," a statement Haden denies.

Wednesday's hearing was not short on theatrics. At one point, Elkins stood up, ripped off his microphone and stormed out. That came after Boyce's attorneys, David Walters, of Howrey LLP, cited a medical record that said Elkins was prone to fantasies - including his belief that he had a daughter killed by a drunken driver.

Doyle asked if "someone there in San Diego" could "try to persuade" Elkins to come back. A few minutes later, Elkins came back into view, apologized, and the hearing was on.

During a lull in the proceedings, Elkins criticized one of Boyce's attorneys of being "an idiot," then wondered if he was being heard. When he was told yes, his response was, "I still think he's an idiot."

Walters said after the hearing that Elkins' words "demonstrate how volatile he is."